Main Service Areas

Health Informatics and Technology Office

The Health Informatics and Technology Office (HITO) was established in October 2019 upon re-organisation of the Department of Health (DH). Led by an Assistant Director of Health, HITO envisions to establish a professional and sustainable IT taskforce to pursue DH’s vision and missions, and the Government’s IT and innovation strategies. HITO adopts a proactive and whole-of-department approach in planning and implementing IT initiatives, with a view to achieving digital transformation of Public Health and foster transformation of DH into a data-driven organisation.

HITO’s vision is:

Digital Transformation of Public Health

HITO’s missions are to:

(a)	accelerate adoption of digital technology to innovate and transform public health functions, and be highly adaptive, responsive and skillful to rapid changes in the internal and external environment;
(b)	build professional business analysis, IT and data analytics teams that support DH’s vision and missions and the Government’s IT and innovation initiatives (e.g. Smart City / e-Government / Streamlining of Government Services);
(c)	adopt a proactive and whole-of-department approach in instilling, planning and implementing digital transformation projects, and promote cross-service collaborations through centralised management and rationalisation of IT resources; and
(d)	foster transformation of DH into a data-driven organisation by building capacity in data analytics, identifying actionable insights and inspiring use cases for the Department.

HITO consists of three divisions:

(1)	the Digital Transformation Division, consisting of public health professionals, performs business analysis and enablement of workflow digitalisation. It bridges communication between business users and IT technical teams, fosters and facilitates DH Service Units’ conceptualisation and planning for digitalisation of their business and workflows. It also analyses user requirements from DH Service Units, identifies business needs that are amenable to IT solutions, and proposes redesign of workflow, supporting Government / Departmental IT initiatives / directions;
(2)	the Technology Development Division, overseen by a Chief Systems Manager (CSM), is supported by IT professionals. It works closely with DH Service Units throughout the life cycle of IT projects/systems, by offering professional advice, identification of IT solutions, preparation for funding acquisition, governance and project management of system development and maintenance. It provides professional advice on and management of security protection of IT systems. It also enhances IT awareness and competencies of departmental staff. CSM serves as the grade manager of all IT staff of the Department; and
(3)	the Data Application Division, overseen by CSM, is supported by data specialists. It advises and implements departmental-wide data governance, data management policies, data literacy training and ensure that IT projects are data centric.

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